Hetepu (Peace & Blessings) Family.
You know, I still run into people who confuse the Kemetic religion with Kemetic spirituality and do not understand that the two are drastically different. Consequently, some of these individuals staunchly criticize Kemetic spirituality and claim that it is a fad, when in fact they were not practicing Kemetic spirituality at all. So, before explaining the difference between the two, let’s understand the difference between religion and spirituality.
The Difference between Religion and Spirituality
Religion is basically a set of beliefs that over time became norms, rules, tradition and superstition. To the point that you hear people saying don’t do this or you will be punished or do this and you will be rewarded.
Spirituality is different from religion in the sense that it is a personal understanding about Divine. Spirituality usually involves understanding how one’s mind works and how to reach one’s greatest potential, so it employs a number of practices such as divination, meditation, spell work, altar work, prayer, rituals, etc. Spirituality cannot be mass produced and does not follow a cookie-cutter scheme, meaning one remedy does not work for everyone. The other thing, shamans and spiritualists usually don’t follow others because they have learned to trust God within them over what someone else says. Unlike religion where you are given a definition of who God is and is not, in spirituality you discover God from within and you spend the rest of your life trying to align yourself with this indwelling intelligence.
It is important to understand that religion is a great tool for some things but ineffective for others. For instance, religion is great for instilling beliefs into children and people who have no self-control or self-discipline. Religion is great for reminding children and people who lack self-discipline of the importance of being moral. But, religion does a horrible job at explaining an individual’s destiny because it is not personalized. This is the reason if you go to church and state that you have a problem. They give the same cookie cutter or blanket remedy, which is to pray or if you are Catholic to say Hail Mary’s, etc. Spirituality is tailored to an individual’s needs but in order for spirituality to work. There has to be a clear understanding of the Divine within, which means understanding one’s mind.
Kemetic Spirituality is Indigenous Thinking
That being said, the Kemetic people initially did not have a religion. A religion later evolved from their spiritual beliefs and practices because over time, people started needing rules since they started lacking self-control due to foreign influence.
Now there are a lot of Kemetic religious followers who tell people (especially newcomers) that they need to set up an altar and give offerings regularly to their ancestors, gods and goddesses, in order to get something. First, this is wrong in so many ways because it is a cookie-cutter remedy especially not knowing the individual’s needs. In general, it is recommended to start with altar work but for some people this might be confusing and it may deter their spiritual progress. Some people may be too open to the point that they are picking up all types of influences. For instance, a lot of people coming from the Pentecostal denomination are open to spirits via the Pentecostal movement of receiving the Holy Ghost, but the lack of metaphysics makes them wrongly see any spirit that speaks-in-tongues as the Holy Ghost. This is the reason these churches have not spiritually evolved.
Informing a newcomer to build an altar and give offerings without explaining why is truly a religious perspective (and western one at that). To think that some entity outside of our being is going to give us something because we gave it a cup of beer or some fruit is crazy.
I always ask when I come across these people with this thinking, “How did you get things before you made offerings to the god/goddess and ancestors?”
Most people who take this religious path do not understand the question because they fail to see that they have superimposed their Christian or Islamic beliefs on to their understanding of the Kemetic tradition. They usually walk away saying that Kemetic spirituality does not work but they were not practicing Kemetic spirituality, they were practicing an aspect (or someone’s interpretation) of the Kemetic religion.
The Kemetic shaman and spiritualist, understanding that the Divine resides within and it all deals with the power the of their mind, knows that we each have three parts to our being: the BA (Higher Self)/Superconscious symbolized as the white Hedjet crown and personified as Osar (Osiris), sahu (lower self)/subconscious symbolized as the red Deshret crown and personified as Set, and Ab/conscious symbolized as the unified Pschent crown personified as Hru (Horus).
Most of what we have learned from birth is governed and overseen by our Set, so when we want something or try to do something new and different. It is our Set who steps in and playa hates by discouraging us from reaching our goals and potential.
So, say you are a guy who wants to get a woman to be in a relationship with you. You pray, meditate, do a spell, make a sigil and/or do a ritual one or two times to impress it on your subconscious and move the Universe so that you get a woman. Well, it is your Set who immediately gets on your left shoulder and says, “It is not going to work” based upon your past experiences and also because Set does not like change. In fact, most people fail to accomplish their goals because as soon as they say what they want. Their Set comes in and discourages them from doing so. In fact, as soon as you do the meditation, spell, sigil and/or ritual and start thinking about it. Your Set is going to appear and try to discourage you by filling you with doubt. From a psychological perspective, if your goals (seeds) are not deeply impressed upon your mind. They are on the surface and therefore superficial, which exposes it to winds of change in TASETT. This is why Set is able to discourage so many of us from achieving our goals.
That’s why there is an alternative.
If you pray, do the meditation, make a sigil, spell and/or do a ritual repetitively, then you impress the goal on your sahu(subconscious), which in turn is forced to hand it over to your BA (Superconscious). This means, do not think about the goal or how it is going to manifest. Just know that you are putting in the work for it to manifest and by Maa (Cause and Effect) it will. This process is referred to as sowing seeds into KAMTA-the Black Lands (which is another term for the Superconscious) because KAMTA is symbolized as deep dark soil, hence a visual pun to the deep recesses of our mind, so that your Osar (Osiris/Higher Self) works on it.
Understand. When you think about your goal especially after doing spiritual work. You are in essence telling your Set to work on the goal based upon what you have learned thus far, which it cannot because your personal knowledge is limited. It is equivalent to putting on a pot of water and watching it come to a boil, which if you stare at the pot. It seems that it never will. You have to do the work and forget about it, which gives the goal to Osar and this is how your Ab or conscious mind (personified as Hru) gets into the fight and we see the epic battle between Hru and Set. It is your Hru’s responsibility to maintain this focus and ignore the influences of Set.
Now to assist your Hru you can also employ the aid of Osar’s allies, which are the guardian spirits commonly called gods and goddesses. The angels, deities, gods, goddesses, spirit guides, guardian spirits, etc. are all connected to the same source or KAMTA. In other words, they are archetypes or emissaries of your Superconscious that focus on specific tasks. For instance, Npu (Anubis) is the name of the Superconscious that opens the way, finds opportunities and lost things, etc. So, if you are a guy who wants to get a woman to be in a relationship with you and you want to employ Npu’s help. You may light a candle and give Npu an offering of chocolate hearts, knowing that it is your Superconscious that is still doing the work. Your Set is still going to appear but now with the added imagery and symbols that are being impressed upon your subconscious, it is harder to be discouraged and easier to keep the symbols in mind, thus ignore Set’s influences and resist the temptation to lust after your results by thinking about it.
The difference between Kemetic religion and Kemetic spirituality is that the so-called deities in Kemetic Spirituality are tools to assist you in control of your subconscious and unifying it with your Superconscious and conscious intent. They are not objects to be worshipped, which is the reason most Kemetic shamans and spiritualists have a host of deities from other cultures as well.
The basis of Kemetic spirituality is forcing Set (the sahu/subconscious or lower self) to work with Osar (the BA/Superconscious or Higher Self) and Hru (the Ab/conscious or mid-self or Soul). So, if you are serious about practicing it, you really need to study how your mind works. Learning about the Kemetic history, the Kemetic legends, etc. is helpful but it cannot help you if you do not have a reference point, which is YOU.
Kemetic Spirituality is based upon the mind and anyone who seriously practices Kemetic spirituality would never go back to organized religion because it is a different way of thinking. Most who practice Kemetic shamanism and Kemetic spirituality do not live their lives by a set of rules because they don’t fear that by doing so they are going to be punished or rewarded, which is childish thinking.
One of the beauties of Kemetic spirituality is that it can be explained scientifically, which is important in this western society that places major emphasis on the intellect. I have nullified and completely dismantled more religious arguments against my practice by simply explaining that what I do by having an altar, doing a spell, etc. is accessing my Higher Mind; and get religious people to see that they go to church out of a tradition of guilt, fear and superstition, and not because they desire to do so. Simply put, if something is good for you, you don’t have to beg people to try and do it like many religious people beg people to attend religious service or worship “God” from the corners and pulpits.
This is why once an individual crosses into the realm of Kemetic Spirituality, there is no way they can unlearn what they know about the mind after they have learned it. In other words, there is no way they can return back to religious thinking and this is what traditional African thinking is about. Now you see that the reason so many people in the west are against indigenous spirituality is because, we don’t make good slaves.
Hetepu.